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. 2007 Mar 15;21(6):644-8.
doi: 10.1101/gad.418707.

Maternal microRNAs are essential for mouse zygotic development

Fuchou Tang  1 , Masahiro Kaneda, Dónal O'Carroll, Petra Hajkova, Sheila C Barton, Y Andrew Sun, Caroline Lee, Alexander Tarakhovsky, Kaiqin Lao, M Azim Surani
Affiliations

Maternal microRNAs are essential for mouse zygotic development

Fuchou Tang et al. Genes Dev. .

Abstract

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) have important roles in diverse cellular processes, but little is known about their identity and functions during early mammalian development. Here, we show the effects of the loss of maternal inheritance of miRNAs following specific deletion of Dicer from growing oocytes. The mutant mature oocytes were almost entirely depleted of all miRNAs, and they failed to progress through the first cell division, probably because of disorganized spindle formation. By comparing single-cell cDNA microarray profiles of control and mutant oocytes, our data are compatible with the notion that a large proportion of the maternal genes are directly or indirectly under the control of miRNAs, which demonstrates that the maternal miRNAs are essential for the earliest stages of mouse embryonic development.

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Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Unsupervised hierarchical clustering heat map of miRNA expression profile of oocytes and early embryos. The cluster heat map was produced using expression levels (Ct value) of 214 miRNAs. Correlation coefficient was used as a similarity measure and a complete linkage method was used as a clustering method. Note that a higher Ct value means a lower expression level.
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
(A) Total amount of miRNA in mature oocytes and early embryos. The error bars were the standard deviations calculated from three independent samples. (B) Morphology of mutant embryos from Dicer knockout oocytes, compared with wild-type control embryos at E1.5. Embryos above the red line are mutant, while embryos below the red line are wild-type controls.
Figure 3.
Figure 3.
Spindle in mutant mature oocytes (D–F) compared with wild-type mature oocytes (A–C). The spindle was stained with rat monoclonal anti-tubulin (YL1/2) antibody (green), and the chromosome was stained with DAPI (blue).
Figure 4.
Figure 4.
Unsupervised hierarchical clustering heat map of wild-type and Dicer knockout single-oocyte cDNA microarray. All genes that are differentially expressed between wild-type (left six columns) and Dicer knockout oocytes (right six columns) are shown. Clustering is based on the log2 of chemiluminescent intensities.
Figure 5.
Figure 5.
(A) Transcript abundance of repetitive elements in control and Dicer mutant oocytes measured by quantitative real-time RT–PCR. The error bars represent standard deviations calculated from two independent samples. (B) DNA methylation status of repetitive elements in control and Dicer mutant oocytes measured by bisulphite genomic sequencing. Filled circles represent methylated CpG and open circles represent nonmethylated CpG. Horizontally aligned circles represent a single DNA molecule. The overall percentage of methylated CpGs is shown below each group.
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